


What Others See In us

by TrishaCollins



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: A mark of fate, Gen, WILL WAS DEAD WHEN HE WAS CONCEIVED
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-26 17:39:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12063843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrishaCollins/pseuds/TrishaCollins
Summary: Elizabeth taught her son respect and manners. When your child rides the borderline between the sea and the land, that can lead to some interesting places.





	What Others See In us

He was dropping flowers into the tide pool with single minded intensity. 

He was six now, and six was probably too old to believe that the ocean cared what he thought or said. Or what he offered in return for its leniency. But his letters had arrived, and others had come to regal him with tales of foreign seas he had never seen. It made the missing father part of him happier, so he kept to his ritual. 

"Hello, Henry." A smooth, female voice said behind him.

He jumped, spinning, a flower still clutched in his hand. It was her again, the odd woman who had taken him to his father. He eyed her with a curious wariness. "Hello."

"What is it you are asking for today, my boy?" She stood, a hood hiding most of her strange features. 

"I wanted to send a letter to my father." He explained, ducking his head. 

"Ahhhh." She breathed, walking toward him and cupping his chin in dirty fingers. "Such a polite little boy."

"Mother says..." He tried to keep his eyes down, but she held his face firmly. "That is we do not use our manners, then we shall never get what we want, much less a glimpse of what we might need."

"And what do you need, my child?" She asked, studying him with odd, liquid eyes. 

He flushed, looking down. "I want father home." He admitted. "Mother is angry and sad, father is just sad. It seems cruel."

"It is cruel. There are so many lost unmourned and unnamed to the sea, would it not be crueler to leave them without guidance?"

He chewed his lip. "I guess."

"Once there was a man who saw to the dead, and yet he and his lady wife have long rested in their slumber." The woman mused. "For the landbound, there was Charon. But until Davy Jones, there was none for the sea." 

He shifted uneasily beside her, brow furrowed. "But why must it be father?"

She turned to him with an alien cant to her head and neck. "Your mother fought the sea once, did you know?"

"She said she fought Davy Jones." He told her, shifting on his toes.

The woman laughed, the sound deep and filling, as though it came from something much larger than she. He watched her, fascinated. 

"She fought the sea itself, she thinks she lost, because your father was given to the Dutchman. But I think t'was just another turn of the tides." She lifted his chin, gazing deeply into his eyes. "Do you know, young Turner, that the fate of the seaborne is inexorably tied to the sea?" 

"But I'm not." He told her, frowning. "I was born in the port, the seas were too wild that day. There was a hurricane." 

"True. But you were conceived between the sea and the land. Your father is the guardian of the seas, and your mother landborne as any other. It is in your blood, Henry. The sea calls. What will your answer be?" 

He thought about it, but found nothing, and finally gave her a rueful smile. "I can't know yet."

She laughed again, full bodied, warm. "So it should be. A hasty answer leads to much ill." She circled his face with her hands, and leaned to press their foreheads together. 

She smelled like salt, and sea rot, and timbers so long submerged that they had ceased to be what they were. When she breathed it, it smelled of the tide. "Your message will reach him."

"Thank you." He whispered, feeling almost too close standing like this. As though he teetered on the edge between a now and a then that he did not quite understand.

She drew away, tips of her fingers lingering on his cheek long after her body had left his space, and then her eyes held him in place as she stepped into the water and vanished. 

He stared at the spot where she had been, not really understanding, as a bead of brackish water rolled slowly down his cheek and plopped to the shore beside him.

His mother called to him, and he barely remembered to drop his bottle into the tide pool.

He never thought to mention the encounter to his mother.


End file.
